Footnoting of a document such as a legal brief, book, manuscript, etc. is a well known technique of providing both uncluttered and smooth flowing information and thoughts, and background or supporting detail to a reader at different locations within the document. The smooth flowing information is the body text of a document, and the supporting detail is made up of footnote text. In constructing such a document, efficient management has always been an elusive skill. This was so when documents were handwritten, and still presents a significant economic and throughput burden today. This is so even with the availability of flexible keyboard/display word processing systems.
During the handwritten document era, a footnote reference too low on a page often left insufficient room for an aesthetically pleasing, and well placed and proportioned, accompanying footnote or a portion thereof. The solution was to terminate the page earlier than desired, abut text against the bottom of the page and chance mismanagement of the succeeding page, write smaller, etc. Mismanagement and/or early termination remain major problems today. This is so even with the availability of modern word processing systems. The available approaches for an operator or author in preparing a footnoted document are for the most part undesirable. Excessive planning is probably the most common approach, and yet, multiple drafts are the most common result. Partially filled pages, an excessive number of footnote references and footnotes appearing on different pages, and unappealing proportion mismatch of body and footnote text, and an excessive number of pages containing only footnotes remain major problems following planning and multiple drafts.
The above mentioned problems have not gone unnoticed, however. One system on the market today provides for footnote management upon printout. With this system, an operator can prepare a footnoted document in one pass, but particular operator attention is required. During preparation, body text is keyed to a body text frame up to a reference point, a footnote reference number is keyed, a footnote frame is called, a corresponding footnote number is keyed, text for the footnote is keyed, and then the body text frame is recalled. Body and footnote text are stored separately. The footnote text is stored in a footnote library for later recall. Following document preparation, there is an opportunity to separately review and edit the body and footnote text, but there is no opportunity to display review and edit an assembled document prior to printing. That is, the first opportunity an operator has to view an assembled document is following printing. During printout, the system merges the body and footnote text. However, resulting aesthetics on occasion are less than desired. This is due in part to imposed system restraints such as a requirement that there be at least one line of body text on each page. In this case, large unprinted areas on numerous pages can occur. On the whole though, planning and multiple drafts are reduced, and preparation is in a logical manner. Even so, glaring disadvantages still exist. The most notable is that the ability to efficiently edit and/or make changes is severely restricted. An example of a result of a simple editing attempt is loss of correspondence between footnote reference designations and footnote designations if footnotes are to be added, intermingled, repositioned, etc. Inserting a reference designation among existing reference designations requires a subsequent additional operation for redesignating all following reference designations. This is also the case for footnote designations if a footnote is to be inserted or deleted. Another disadvantage is the above mentioned attention that is required of an operator. An error in either a footnote reference designation or a footnote designation can either prevent later document assembly during printout, or require additional editing and printout.
With the above in mind, additional related problems exist and flexibility of available systems is somewhat restricted. Readdressing the handwritten document era for a moment, mere designation of footnote references and footnotes, standing alone, was fraught with problems. An author in referencing a footnote could readily apply the same designation to both a reference point and corresponding footnote if the designation for a prior reference and footnote were recalled or on the same page. However, a loss of recollection and an absence of a prior same page designation required either a note pad and pen or leafing through previously prepared pages. Obtaining a final inked copy with a minimum number of drafts required particular writer attention. Editing of inked copy was unacceptable, if not impossible. Paint and lift-off compositions are more modern day conveniences. Although other problems were present, the above mentioned problems alone quelled most desires to be unique in the designation area.
Advancing again to the present, modern day keyboard/display word processing systems, although beneficial in many respects, have not been structured and/or programmed to efficiently handle even rather simple designation problems. For one thing, many envisioned approaches to handling even mundane author desires required programming and/or structure additions which would be prohibitive from a cost standpoint. With this in mind, any thoughts of providing for different types of footnotes such as book and magazine descriptions with different typestyles, and using different designations for each, have quickly been abandoned. This fact has not been diminished in any respect when a desire to reset designations on a chapter basis, and/or designations are to be made up of both fixed and variable data, have been considered. When these considerations are coupled with the fact that separately stored body and footnote text must be brought together with a reasonable per page correspondence between footnote references and corresponding footnotes, there has been a compounding of the envisioned tasks and problems.
The above described capabilities of penmanship and word processing systems are prior art to the extent that a semblance of a desired end result is achievable. What has not been achievable though, are the flexibility to efficiently both meet author desires and manage designation tasks from input to output. It is these deficiencies which cause the prior art to fall short of either anticipating or rendering the instant invention obvious. More specifically, the ability to automatically designate footnotes and footnote references based upon operator initially selected and updated designations is lacking.